Cambridge, Leeds and Southend-on-Sea have today been named as the next 3 UK cities and towns to be covered via Cityfibre and Vodafone’s joint deployment of a new Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband ISP network by the end of 2021. The rollout is being supported by an investment of £171m.

At the end of last year both operators agreed a joint £500 million deal to deploy FTTH ultrafast broadband. Phase One of this scheme (the build phase has already begun) would seek to cover a “minimum” of 1 million homes in up to 12 of Cityfibre’s existing cities and towns, which according to Vodafone is expected to be “largely complete” by 2021.

After Phase One there’s also the “potential to extend” this network up to 5 million homes (approximately 50 towns and cities, representing 20% of the current UK broadband market) by 2025, although that would require even more funding. Since then Cityfibre has announced that they’ve been acquired for £537.8m cash by Bidco and will be going private, which should resolve their future need for more investment.

So far the partners have announced that Milton Keynes would be the first to benefit from this rollout at a cost of £40m, which was followed by Aberdeen for another £40m and Peterborough for at least £30m. Shortly after that Cityfibre added Edinburgh, Coventry, Huddersfield and Stirling to their plan, which at that point reflected a total investment so far of £315m and 500,000+ premises passed.

Today the above have been joined by Cambridge, Leeds and Southend-on-Sea, which takes the total number of areas announced so far to ten. Overall this now represents over £465m of committed infrastructure investment in the programme by CityFibre to date, which should leave enough left for an additional two locations.

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Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“Our roll-out is gathering pace. We have made investment commitments that will transform the digital capabilities of ten towns and cities forever. The full fibre age is taking hold across the UK and CityFibre is leading the charge. Britain should prepare for a copper-to-fibre switchover as this aging technology cannot keep up with the UK’s connectivity needs.”

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Nick Jeffery, Vodafone UK Chief Executive, said:

“Overhauling the nation’s broadband is a vital undertaking that we’re proud to be a part of. By bringing the benefits of full fibre to more and more cities and towns, from Stirling to Southend-on-Sea, one million homes across the country can benefit from this world-class technology.”

The speed which CF are making their announcements and progressing is good for a company of their size. A similar situation with Virgin Media, they are always digging up places and getting people connected. But OR hardly appears round here on the roadworks.org site.

I'm guessing that OR are at least 10 times (probably more) the size of CF and Virgin Media. I would have thought we'd be seeing weekly announcements by OR of their deployed full fibre, or G.fast.

About G.fast, after it appeared then disappeared off the dsl checker for most people, as it now re-appeared?

I'm guessing that OR are at least 10 times (probably more) the size of CF and Virgin Media. I would have thought we'd be seeing weekly announcements by OR of their deployed full fibre, or G.fast.

OR have announced considerably more areas than other providers. Look at the size of some of the cities announced by OR.It takes months to plan and get these projects started and many months more to rollout.I don't expect a running commentary by OpenReach but do expect important milestones to be publicised. Such as 2 million done, 3 million done etc.

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About G.fast, after it appeared then disappeared off the dsl checker for most people, as it now re-appeared?

Only future planned G.Fast disappeared. Currently installed G.Fast is still on the checker.My information is planned G.Fast isn't returning to the checker.Plans were scaled back for G.Fast so some of those areas that showed it as previously planned may have been reconsidered.

The speed which CF are making their announcements and progressing is good for a company of their size. A similar situation with Virgin Media, they are always digging up places and getting people connected. But OR hardly appears round here on the roadworks.org site.

I'm guessing that OR are at least 10 times (probably more) the size of CF and Virgin Media. I would have thought we'd be seeing weekly announcements by OR of their deployed full fibre, or G.fast.

About G.fast, after it appeared then disappeared off the dsl checker for most people, as it now re-appeared?

Given Virgin Media's cable network passes over half of all homes and businesses in the UK Openreach would struggle to be twice the size let alone 10 times

The other two are building from scratch. Most of what Openreach are doing is reusing existing assets, with some duct unblocking and pole replacement. G.fast doesn't involve any street works at all usually, FTTP waves of it as teams of contractors hit areas and prepare the passive network.

Operators are now actually struggling to get things done as the supply of contractors to do the work is limited. VM rock up, hire loads of contractors and begin Project Lightning, CF, Gigaclear, et al are trying to dig networks, then Openreach start to get serious about FTTP.

The speed which CF are making their announcements and progressing is good for a company of their size. A similar situation with Virgin Media, they are always digging up places and getting people connected. But OR hardly appears round here on the roadworks.org site.

Here ya go, Bowdon. All Openreach, all ongoing or starting in the next few days - they are part way through the project and a bunch of work has already been done. They seem to only hit roadworks.org a few days before work starts - 5 day notices I imagine. These are nearly all duct unblocking or new poles, with the very, very occasional new section of duct where the existing ones are full. TL;DR in Fibre City / Fibre First areas they're doing their thing.

Kirkstall, Meanwood and Headingley in Leeds if you're interested in checking it out.

While it's a bit off topic again I should make very, very clear that the Fibre City / Fibre First areas are not ubiquitous FTTP - some exchanges in Leeds are, lucky people, all or virtually all FTTP with the odd bit of G.fast while others, including my own, are zero brownfield FTTP and all G.fast as we are a pilot area built before Fibre First, or in the cases of others plans were already well advanced to build out G.fast and it made more sense to complete the builds than abandon them I guess.

I noticed on the other forum Ixel got his quote back for the FTTPoD, which seemed reasonable. So when FTTPoD orders open up again, and if there is no sign on the horizon for FTTP I think I'll test the waters.

Leeds is the UK's 3rd city, there's a lot of housing that's very amenable to FTTP and an extensive CityFibre metro network. There's tons of fibre in the city, it forms part of the backbone fibre infrastructure in the UK - it's on the eastern side of the ring interconnecting with Manchester and heading further north.

This said the metropolitan area is at about 78% >100Mb coverage, 91.7% >30Mb. Leicester East, West and South constituencies all have higher >100Mb and >30Mb coverage.

So it's not quite as simple as Leeds having Vodafone on the way, Openreach Fibre First in progress and Leicester being left behind - even with the G.fast coverage Leicester has better superfast and ultrafast coverage.

My hope for full fibre is that in order to link Leeds and Manchester they have to come through my town. I'm thinking of being a modern day pirate and hitching a fibre connection as it passes lol

There's a trunk fibre route in between Leeds and Manchester with several operators either owning or leasing fibre on it. You can certainly hitch a fibre connection on there as it passes, assuming you've some optical regeneration kit and a wave division multiplexer.